Must-Have Husband

chocolate-colored eyes. “If you’re coming back by Saturday, maybe you could double up with Kelly and me? We’re grabbing a burger, then a movie in town. I’m betting we could talk her sister Victoria into coming along.”
    “No, thanks.”
    “No? Just like that?”
    “Let me guess. She’s a brunette and beautiful, with a teeny little…” He gripped his bottom, then cupped his hands in front of his chest. “And great big…”
    Hank stared at him in disbelief. “You’ve got a problem with that?”
    “I’ve got a problem with all your setups, Hank.”
    “Why?”
    “Because the girls you pick out for me are the ones you want for yourself.” He walked away, whistling brightly.
    “Hey!” Hank called after him. “She’s a redhead! Scottish background just like you!”
    “Not interested,” Mac continued in a singsongy voice, making his way toward the door.
    “You’re going to wind up a bachelor if it kills you.”
    Mac stopped walking and turned slowly on his heels. “I’m not going out on a limb for just any woman,” he said, meeting his friend’s gaze. “She’s got to be special. You know, have it .”
    “What’s it ?” Hank asked with dismay. “You aching to hear angels sing or something?”
    Mac considered this. “Maybe.” He removed his pack, set it down, and pulled a rain poncho from a forward zipper. Hank glanced out the broad picture window framing the mountains and valley.
    “What makes you so sure it’s going to rain? Sky’s as clear as a bell.”
    Mac slipped on his poncho. “Any man’s been hiking these hills as long as I have tends to develop a sense of things. Foreknowledge, some might say. Others call it intuition.” He shifted the pack back onto his shoulders and a satellite phone slid from his jeans pocket, smacking against the redwood floor.
    “Foreknowledge?” Hank loudly cleared his throat. “Looks more like weather.com to me.”

    Rain beat down harder as Connie and Linda cowered beneath the canopy of an incense cedar. Connie steadied the soggy trail map in her hands but couldn’t make heads or tails of it in the drowning rain. “I think we go… No, wait a minute.”
    “Might help if you turned it right-side up. Here, let me see that.” Linda snatched away the map, and it tore in a jagged line down the middle.
    “Great, Linda! Really super.” Connie shook out her dripping half of the page. “Look what you’ve done now.”
    Lightning split the sky, and the girls huddled closer together.
    “Sorry,” Linda said with a grimace.
    “Try your cell again,” Connie urged.
    Linda took it from her jacket pocket, sheltering its face with her hand.
    “Still nothing doing?”
    Linda’s eyes registered worry. “Not a bar.”
    Thunder boomed as darkness shrouded the forest, settling between towering redwoods and ponderosa pines.
    “Night’s falling.”
    Linda swallowed hard, panning the dense landscape. In their effort to take shelter from the storm, they’d wandered off the trail. Now that everything was covered in a deep sludge, they couldn’t find it at all. “Uh-huh.”
    “Don’t panic.” Connie wrapped an arm around her little sister. “This is one of those summer things. It will blow over.”
    “Sure, and then what?”
    “Then… Well, I don’t know! We’ll think of something. It’s not like we’ll be stuck out here forever.”
    Linda’s chin trembled as she shook her head. Connie met her sister’s panicked gaze, knowing just what she was thinking. They were going to be stuck out here forever. Eventually, nothing would be found of them…except for a few scattered bones that had been picked over by grizzly bears.
    “Linda?” Connie asked, her voice warbling.
    Linda’s voice trembled in return. “Huh?”
    “Oh my Gawd!” they shouted in unison, gripping one another.

    Mac shimmied up a spreading oak, his hiking boots slipping on the damp trunk. The rain had stopped an hour ago, leaving everything in the forest soaked. He steadied himself and climbed higher, his food bag on a rope and pulley secured around his waist. He wouldn’t have any bears stealing his grub this time. He damn well couldn’t afford it. Not with his business, as well as his dreams of financial security, having gone up in smoke. His feet slid again, and he paused, glancing down below. He’d been lucky to get his tent pitched before the downpour. Thankfully, he’d been able to keep everything dry, including some wood and kindling sticks he’d collected and